


Perspective

by magpiespirit



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anxiety, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Character Growth, Fluff, Hostile Bookshop, M Rating Is for Language Only, M/M, Negotiations, No Aziraphale You Can't Hack Your Own Brain, One Kiss, Romantic Gestures, STOP TAGGING MAG, The Nature of Angels, Touch Aversion, houseplants, i Appreciate you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 06:51:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20502701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpiespirit/pseuds/magpiespirit
Summary: Aziraphale comes aware of certain things after Crowley tries to be romantic. Life, with all its dangers and pitfalls and wonderful attractions, goes on, as it tends to do.





	Perspective

**Author's Note:**

> I've been looking at this for a while trying to talk myself into posting it. It's silly and I can't get into Aziraphale's head. Oh well. If you haven't read the book, **SPOILER:** Aziraphale's bookshop is restored with many more children's books. I couldn't tell if it was _all_ children's books (still rare and first-edition stuff), so I've assumed here that it's a blend, since I'm writing a blend of book and show as a rule anyway. I have Strong Feelings about the bookshop restoration that I'll address in a fic at some point. Maybe when I feel better about writing Aziraphale.
> 
> Once again, this is in the same general universe as the _Uriel's Choice_ series, but I don't believe you need to read them to understand the story. They'll only give a little more background.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a six thousand year old angel in possession of a good collection of rare and valuable books, must be in want of a place to store them.

That was, broadly speaking, what Aziraphale meant by “bookshop” when he said it. He did not care for customers, nor did he care for browsers, nor did he care for the money that came from selling the books he physically kept in his shop. But when he’d opened A.Z. Fell & Co., his superiors had developed the annoying habit of dropping in on him unexpectedly, and running a bookshop was much easier to explain than just owning a vast number of priceless treasures. It was a reasonable human cover, and an ever-expanding inventory would escape the notice of Heaven.

It was all very practical. Everything he did was practical, in that it directly benefited him in some way. Some would say that was less than angelic (they would be correct), but after 6,000 years, Aziraphale had learned to combine the efficiency of Heaven with the pragmatism of Hell to make him a better guardian, which _ was _angelic, in most senses. That the thing he was guarding was a book collection hardly mattered — it would work on anything. Music. People, assuming they would consent to being hidden away and subjected to such horrors as fiendishly lumpy sofas and mandatory discussions of the comparative merits of pre-mixed polyvinyl acetate and handmade glues for modern repairs. Books just happened to be his current and longest-lasting fixation.

(His hiding system made librarians angry, physicists cry, and hipsters rethink their life choices, _ and _it kept people from navigating his shop on the rare occasions that they managed to get inside.) 

The shop was more than just a place to store his collection; it was his Earthly refuge, the place that was _ Aziraphale’s, _saturated with his likes and his miracles. It was the one place that felt like it didn’t belong to Heaven at all, because it had enough of Crowley in it to keep it Apart. And so, he didn’t just care for it, he delighted in it.

The arrangement with Crowley, pre-Adam Young, had allowed him more time to delight also in the inventions and pleasures of humans. Even the human form he had become most fond of over the millennia, that of a middle-aged, portly man with no particularly memorable features other than his unnaturally white-blond hair, served a purpose, although he’d still managed to be caught doing inspirations and miracles since he’d been on Earth. (Whenever he’d been caught by an artist over the millennia, he’d stretched the truth and attributed said inspirations and miracles to Uriel, which annoyed her to no end, but at least she had a nice reputation as an angel of knowledge and light, and Aziraphale could walk the Earth largely unbothered.)

Aziraphale was not a typical angel. He was not demon material. And he certainly wasn’t human. For better or for worse, he was only capable of being himself.

He knew these things all the time, but didn’t think about them. Who and what he was seemed somewhat immaterial; did any of it matter as long as the job got done? Heaven had made it quite clear long ago that they had no personal fondness for him, and he didn’t particularly care for them either, so keeping up appearances was the name of the game. He did it in front of other angels because he had to, and in front of Crowley because he (perhaps foolishly) valued the demon’s good opinion, but he wasn’t unaware of his flaws. They just...went largely unacknowledged.

The internal peace of self-denial lasted for six thousand years, with a few bumpy, self-conscious patches every so often that were mostly assuaged by a good miracle or some gesture that made Crowley _ shine _with pleasure (and that more than anything should have been a clue a long time ago). And then, he had to rethink everything when life shifted in what should have been the slightest of ways:

Crowley showed up at Aziraphale’s door in those ridiculous glasses and equally ridiculous trousers with a smile and a basket of potted succulents. The door slammed behind him, cutting off the only escape from the change Aziraphale hadn’t been expecting and wasn’t ready for.

“You have _ got _to take these off my hands,” said the demon immediately, shaking the basket. His careful projection of nonchalance was embroidered with threads of anxiety, which was both cute and confusing. He shook the basket again in Aziraphale’s direction. “They’ve been bullying my spider plants.”

Aziraphale could certainly feel the malevolence radiating off these particular succulents. It was remarkably similar to the feeling he’d gotten off the lower demons down in Hell — a sort of slick, malicious collection of shadows that just happened to be shaped like plants. He didn’t trust them. “Why give them to me?”

Crowley made a sound in his throat that made Aziraphale think of an angry sneeze sneaking into a church. “I’m the ultimate authority in my flat, angel. _ Me. _ I can’t have the plants forming hierarchies, and...and _ plotting. _No, these have got to go. And I thought you could, you know, hang these up strategically around the shop, just to make the customers a little less likely to stick around…”

“Oh, my dear,” said Aziraphale with a rush of adoration, “I think that might be one of the sweetest things anyone’s ever done for me.”

“Don’t make a thing of it,” Crowley grumped, slouching over to the antique cash register and setting the basket atop the desk, perhaps a little more violently than necessary. “I don’t _ do _sweet. They just have to be elsewhere.”

“Of course. I’d be delighted to take them off your hands, Crowley,” he replied indulgently. 

Crowley made a face and pretended not to care. Contrary to the flashy way he obfuscated the rest of his life, Crowley spoke affection with his whole body, each thought spelled out in the long lines of him just in case words weren’t enough to get the point across. It took a discerning eye to see that see that the violence in his hurt anger came from the same place as the awkward jerking in his flippancy: a kind of affirmation-seeking vulnerability that Aziraphale couldn’t relate to. But Crowley had always been sensitive about his propensity to _ care _ about things, and after having gone to Hell, Aziraphale finally understood. In a place like that, being anything other than nasty probably got you hurt, and caring was only a setup for disappointment. It wasn’t like Aziraphale intended to tattle on Crowley, but old habits _ did _die hard.

They’d work on it. Aziraphale, for his part, intended to explore more of this “bastard” side that Crowley talked about, if only because he suspected it would keep him out of trouble and help him with his collection.

A not-insignificant portion of Aziraphale’s existence was dedicated to the pursuit and — not _ hoarding, _ exactly, but yes, to an ill-informed bystander, hoarding, _ exactly _ — of eclectic knowledge and understanding. It wasn’t only hedonism or gluttony or whatever anyone else wanted to call it; the practice had begun long ago, when he was still figuring out what humans liked, how to make them comfortable, that sort of thing. BE NOT AFRAID wasn’t necessary when you were one of them, he’d found, so he threw himself into Earthly treasures and pleasures and sensations, learning what they knew (or what they thought they knew), falling a little more in love with them with every discovery. It was too much a part of him to get rid of, at this point. 

He wasn’t a good angel, when you got right down to it; whether it was prolonged proximity to curious humans, or prolonged friendship with the demon who’d tempted Eve with forbidden knowledge, he had passed the point of no return long before the Antichrist had ever been born. It was time to evolve, he realized — into what, he wasn’t sure, and further, he wasn’t sure what direction he wanted to go. He didn’t want to go any direction that didn’t involve the sweet idiot slouching against his counter, long hands tucked into comically small pockets and eyes hidden behind his sunglasses.

“Sometimes you look at me _ like that _and it feels like you’re planning my discorporation,” said Crowley, expression somewhere between unsettled and flattered. Aziraphale realized he’d been staring, and looked around, pretending he hadn’t been. He folded his hands across his stomach to stop the nervous sketching of invisible symbols he’d picked up sometime between Eden and now.

“Not since that misunderstanding in Portugal.” He pursed his lips, surveyed his shop, and nodded. “Help me hang these, would you? I’m thinking a celestial spiral might maximize the effect, but you’re the expert on malice.”

“Angel…” He looked at Crowley, who looked so incredibly fond, so incredibly _ soft, _that it flipped everything upside-down for a moment. Crowley moved his arms, took half a step toward Aziraphale, then stopped short. He gestured around the shop lazily instead of doing whatever he’d originally intended. “That’s a good configuration. I didn’t bring enough to do it properly, one, one, two, three, five, eight, and so on, but we can fudge it a little if you have a good ruler.”

For some reason, Aziraphale felt like he wasn’t measuring up. Like Crowley had seen something in him, or hadn’t seen what he should have seen. It was — it was _ romantic, _which wasn’t exactly something Aziraphale had put much thought into. They had been involved with one another for millennia; they had saved each other from painful (if impermanent) discorporations, not to mention the boredom and loneliness of functional immortality. If Crowley wanted a more dramatic dynamic, then…

(Crowley and dramatics? Who would have thought?)

He _ wanted _to do these sweet little things, but he didn’t know where to start; Crowley liked so few things that giving him presents wasn’t particularly special, and he got so irritable whenever Aziraphale said anything nice about him that it was practically a sly insult instead. (He had some ideas about the practical applications of this, but they weren’t at that place yet. They both had some apologies to make, and for his part, Aziraphale wasn’t sure where to begin, or if he was ready to.) How else did one show affection? There were probably books on the subject — he knew he’d seen some questionable ones with glossy dust jackets by people inappropriately calling themselves gurus — but those were humans writing about humans, and Crowley was not, at his core, human.

“Thank you, my dear,” he said, deciding that further research was his best option and defaulting to honesty in lieu of theatrics. “I appreciate you.”

“Wish you wouldn’t,” Crowley grumbled, surprising exactly zero angels and one succulent who hadn’t been paying enough attention.

* * *

The shift in Aziraphale’s relationship with Crowley just a few weeks later was neither surprising nor unwanted, but it did bring with it some new difficulties.

There wasn’t a manual or guidebook for showing affection to a demon. The closest thing to advice about “romancing demons” was a series of articles published online about relationships with “psychopaths,” and the prevailing advice was simply “get out.” Crowley was hardly one of those (the very idea was laughable, his tendency to make life unpleasant for humans notwithstanding), and Aziraphale had no intention of letting their closeness go, so he just had to improvise. It did not come as a shock that he didn’t like that.

There was comfort in routine — stability, predictability, a kind of solidity that mitigated the damage of outside surprise. Aziraphale preferred thorough and methodical research over slapdash approaches to things, especially when it was something he cared about. This needed to be done right. It needed to _ mean something. _ But the human question — _ what do you give to someone who has everything? — _ applied, as well as its more magical variant, _ what do you do for someone who can effortlessly do everything for themselves? _

Honestly, how did humans do it? How did they manage to romance each other so handily? For Crowley, it was easy; Aziraphale enjoyed the little gestures, the meals, the gifts, the shy little movements that adorably turned into confident strides in another direction, because he was a creature of indulgence. The demon was another indulgence he hoped would last forever. But he wasn’t stupid, and he knew it wasn’t the same. Crowley just didn’t enjoy _ actively being loved _like Aziraphale did. 

(It was time to evolve.)

There wasn’t even anyone to ask. Aziraphale hadn’t had many human friends, and they were all dead by now. Angels were useless, both because Crowley was a demon and because he wasn’t on speaking terms with any of them. Demons had always been out of the question. Of the humans he was vaguely acquainted with, Madame Tracy seemed to know the most about this sort of thing, but they were only acquainted in the sense that she had stopped him from firing a weapon at a child after he had used some archaic and ethically questionable rules to afford himself entrance to her body. And so, in the absence of other options, he turned to his old standby.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have much in his own collection to help. His tastes trended toward the esoteric and occult; religious texts, books of prophecy, books of magic and witchcraft. Oscar Wilde was a personal favorite — they’d been acquainted, briefly — and he had a fondness for new genres, historical value, or boundary-pushing. Mary Shelley, Phillis Wheatley, Aldous Huxley, William IX and the troubadours, Toni Morrison, Sa’di, Geoffrey Chaucer, _ Nibelungenlied, _ Hafiz, writings by philosophers both ancient and contemporary (or at least the ones whose self-love didn’t spill over into Narcissism), and the like. He didn’t have any Harlequin novels, and the books that _ did _contain romance were severely out-of-date, not to mention completely ridiculous.

He happened upon the book accidentally.

He couldn’t remember when he’d acquired a copy of it, or why. It was a paperback thing, with a cute illustration on the cover, and he suspected he hadn’t actually procured it for himself or inherited it from Adam Young’s imagination; instead, someone (probably a child accompanying its parent) had likely left it at his shop and never returned for it. He _ did _ read it, though, because it was there, and the themes of betrayal and forgiveness and friendship — redemption — seemed to apply. It wasn’t particularly _ seductive _ advice, but as he flipped through the pages, he realized that it was time to make those apologies. It was time to be honest about the past as well as the present. And he needed to do it knowing that, while Crowley owed him apologies as well, he might not get them, and that was all right. For the first time, he understood humility as more than an abstract concept: it wasn’t, and actually _ couldn’t be, _some kind of exchange.

_ What do you give a male-presenting occult being who has everything? _

One gave him the truth, deep in one’s most secret of hearts. Aziraphale could only be himself, and that was all he had to give. If it wasn’t enough for Crowley, then they’d carry on as they had for 6,000 years already. 

* * *

Crowley was napping by the time Aziraphale came to his decision. The angel had always been slow. It hadn’t just been an excuse or a platitude when he’d told Crowley he went too fast for him; he was slow to change, slow to understand. He’d always lagged half a step behind, even as a Cherub in Heaven, always calculated his steps and measured his words. On Earth, he attributed it to his form — it was _ tight, _ like he was bound inside something far too small, and concentrating on not _ exploding _made him distractible — but there was no excuse for Heaven. 

(Sometimes he thought the Archangels were right to think of him as a joke, but not for the reasons they assumed. God was infallible; he wasn’t a _ mistake, _ the joke of Aziraphale the Misplaced just hadn’t been explained yet.

_ And it probably never would be.) _

Crowley awoke a week after he fell asleep, three days after Uriel sneaked down and tore down Aziraphale’s world by informing him that God had left the universe a long time ago. He felt blank. He should have felt something else, _ anything _else, but it was like being drunk without the substance, or being just on the edge of discorporation. His human body felt, oddly, like cool fire; his lips were numb, as were the tips of his fingers. He hadn’t left the couch since he’d seen Uriel out of the shop.

The demon waltzed in, heedless of the sign on the door, because the sign was for unwanted customers, not for Crowley. Aziraphale recognized this distantly, and wanted to smile, or get up, or do something, but he didn’t. Part of him couldn’t. Part of him was afraid that if he moved, he would destroy something — he would be an _ angel, _full of fire and vengeance, the cold kind of calculating entity that could and would kill just to right a wrong. He had been issued a flaming sword for a reason.

“Angel, I brought macarons from that patisserie with the irritating flirt,” Crowley called through the shop, “so you had better come out or I’ll eat them all myself.” A pause. Quiet, uneven footsteps. “Angel?_ Aziraphale?” _

“In the back,” he tried to say, but it came out garbled because of the lip problem. He thought he ought to know how to fix it, but his mind wasn’t coming up with any solutions.

It wasn’t but a moment before Crowley’s worried face appeared around the doorframe, followed shortly by the rest of him. He always managed to move like a serpent, winding around corners, draping himself over objects, but that, too, was a thought that couldn’t be appreciated. “Angel, you look awful.”

“Yes, I would,” Aziraphale mumbled around his malfunctioning lips.

Crowley set the box of macarons on the floor and joined the angel on the couch, wedging himself against the armrest, careful to keep his distance. It was strange; normally, Aziraphale appreciated that. Normally, he preferred to initiate any contact between them, or between himself and _ anyone, _but for some reason, what he wanted more than anything was for Crowley to twist around him until he felt real again. For all his faults, though, the demon had never been one to break boundaries like that. He’d push and cajole and pout if the issue was negotiable, but he wasn’t like other demons in that regard.

“What happened?” Crowley’s shoulders tensed and his lips thinned. His already-stiff posture managed to go even stiffer, a coil ready to spring. “Did someone attack you while I was asleep? Was it Heaven? Must have been, Hell’s not very creative, they’d have-”

“Stop,” Aziraphale told him. It sounded more like a plea than a statement, though. “It was — I — Uriel…!”

“Shit,” Crowley said.

“Was it always in the Almighty’s plan to abandon us, or did She just get bored?”

“Fuck,” Crowley amended.

“I was so _ careless,” _Aziraphale said miserably, hoping for something, anything at all. Tears would be nice. Even that anger, if only for a shocking moment. 

Crowley looked, oddly, like a child with his hand in a cookie jar, or a deer in headlights, or some other expression that might explain the exact type of lip-dip and vague guilt written into the dots and curves of his face. He took off his glasses and his eyes were wide, too, but Aziraphale felt his own gaze caught and drawn to the demon. The shadowed, calculating part of his brain knew the name for that kind of demonic trick, but he couldn’t consciously recall it.

“You weren’t careless,” said Crowley carefully, inching his hand toward Aziraphale. When there was no resistance, he took Aziraphale’s hand in his. “You did what you were built to do: love Her. We all were, angel. Did you know, Hastur targets men of God because he hates Her so much; he wouldn’t if he hadn’t loved Her first.”

“I hurt them,” Aziraphale added at a soft church-murmur, like a confession. “Uriel. Gabriel. All of them. Every angel in Heaven has been suffering for so long and I didn’t do a thing to help. I had faith, and my faith made me confident, and they’re up there _ wasting away-” _

“That’s not your fault, and it’s not your responsibility.”

“Isn’t it? I was created to protect Heaven.”

Crowley squeezed his hand. His eyes seemed to almost _ glisten. _“So what, then, you’re just gonna fuck off back to Heaven to do Gabriel’s job?”

“I would choose you over them every day,” he confessed, “and that’s the worst part of it. As wrong as I was, as stupid as I’ve been, I wouldn’t give you up. You deserve my loyalty.”

Crowley brought Aziraphale’s hand to his mouth and kissed the knuckles there, pressing gentle lips to the intermediate phalanges of his third and fourth fingers between the barrier of Crowley’s thumbs. It felt like a shock, and suddenly, Aziraphale wasn’t quite so adrift. He was tethered to the point of contact, the overwhelming sense of Being There.

“Tell me what I can do for you,” the demon said quietly. His lovely black-clad form contrasted with the ugly green of the sofa. It almost felt obscene, seeing him there, but Aziraphale didn’t want him to leave.

“There’s nothing to be done.”

“Then let me — let me touch you, yeah? Let me take care of you. I won’t ask about Uriel, if you don’t want. Just _ please, _let me…” Crowley took a breath and let it out in a sort of half-sigh. “Let me love you. I can’t do anything else.”

And what else could he do but agree? He allowed Crowley to pull him down into a loose embrace, Aziraphale’s cheek to Crowley’s chest, and it felt like blood returning to dead limbs in pins and needles and pain. One hand went into his hair and the other to the curve of his neck, stroking lightly from the atlas all the way down to the T1 and back up again. Aziraphale couldn’t remember the last time he’d been touched so kindly, and it was eerie, but that same wrongness pulled him out of the ether and back into his body, grounding him, allowing him to focus on the physical. Crowley’s hands were long and cool. The fingers running through his hair were soft and gentle. It was so unlike the way the demon presented himself, but it was exactly the way he _ was, _when he wasn’t actively being demonic. 

He wanted to stay like that, quiet and settling, but Crowley deserved better than silence.

“All the little things,” he managed to say into their soft little bubble, and nothing happened; nobody appeared to strike him down. He didn’t fall. Aziraphale had never felt safer than this to say something risky. And _ She was gone. _ “Some part of me always knew. I didn’t pray, not once after — after they murdered Her. I didn’t worry that my little indiscretions would get me cast out, because I didn’t even get a verbal chastisement for lying about the sword, and I told myself She was just being indulgent with me. I just wanted to be wrong. I wanted to be wrong so badly that I was willing to risk scorching my soul just to hear Her voice. And then Uriel came and told me it was all for nothing.”

“Fuck,” said Crowley again, the tips of his fingers digging in briefly. “Angel…”

“I’d forgotten what rage felt like.” 

The demon tensed, but said anyway, “Tell me how it felt.”

“I wanted to take vengeance on Heaven — for lying to me, for manipulating events in their favor. For sending me on stupid holy missions that probably weren’t set or sanctioned by God. I said all the right things to her, I played the part she needed me to play, but the more I thought, I wanted to rip Uriel’s soul out of her incorporation and rend it into pieces. I’ve never been so afraid of myself. I’m soft, Crowley-”

“You’re _ not-” _

“I am,” he said, “and I want to be. Nobody else wanted me to be. Not Gabriel, not God, not even you. Heaven sees it as a weakness, but I see it as a strength. I can choose not to smite my enemies. I can choose to give away my flaming sword instead of striking down the Serpent of Eden. I can choose to accept that I love you. I don’t _ want _to choose fury and blood and righteous violence. Doesn’t Heaven have enough soldiers? Can’t I renounce that part of me, the Cherubic part, and focus on Divine inspiration? I would rather bless one single human than smite a thousand wicked creatures.”

The confession — for it was one — rubbed Aziraphale raw from the inside out. There was nothing left to hide anymore, but there was no one to hide it from, either, was there? He wasn’t expected to toe the party line. There was no party. Aziraphale never had to pick up a sword in the name of Heaven again, and although there were things worth fighting for, celestial triumph wasn’t one of them.

Crowley’s hands stroked him some more. It hurt. It felt wonderful. The grip of his forearms around Aziraphale’s scapulae was firm enough to make everything real, and in the short term, that would be enough. 

The hush of them was only interrupted by the ticking of a clock. That was what had sent him into his spiral, he remembered, the rhythmic clock-tick and his own despair swirling together into a sort of trance state. He wasn’t alone this time. He never really had been, had he? Even when he and Crowley really had been bitter enemies and had fought to the point of discorporating one another, the demon had been a reliable constant. Crowley had always looked at him fondly, with respect that nobody else could spare for him, with—

“Oh,” he said, the realization striking him all of a sudden.

“What?”

“I thought it was the Almighty. I thought being on Earth just made Her love feel different. But it wasn’t Her, it was you. All this time. The faith I felt, the love, was yours.”

He could feel Crowley shrug below him. “Wasn’t the same that far back. You’re a Cherub; people are _supposed _to love you as much as they fear you. It wasn’t personal until I got to know you, and I didn’t _understand _it until...Rome, I think. With the oysters. You _tempted _me, and I thought, _oh, _that’s the second half of our little dance, and it was perfect, not because it worked, but because it was you. Before that, I thought it was just fun. I discorporated you, and you’d get that look on your face, like _how dare you, now I have to fill out forms in triplicate, _but it never stopped you from sharing space with me when we were on our off-hours later. You’d discorporate me, and it was, I dunno. Felt good to be the center of your attention, and it was intimate. Or something. Whatever.”

Aziraphale thought of Sula and Nel, and then of Robin and Nora, and of honesty, and the only thing he had to lose, he would only lose if he did nothing. So, filing away the discussion about discorporation for a future date, he said, “I haven’t been fair to you, Crowley. You were always there for me, even when we were actively working against each other. You took risks for me and instead of reciprocating — or asking you to stop — I prioritized a fantasy. I took advantage of you, I think. I don’t intend to stop choosing you, but I’m sorry for how I treated you.”

“Oh, angel, don’t do that,” Crowley said, not sounding particularly bothered despite his words. “One of the things I like best about you is that you don’t apologize. You just do what you think is right.”

“In this case, apologizing _ is _right,” he insisted.

“Then I guess I have to accept it. _ But,” _said the demon, “I’ll change my mind if you start apologizing for every little thing. If this becomes habit, I’ll...hide your books. One at a time. All around London. And I’ll tell people they’re out there to find, so if you don’t find your books before they do, you’ll never get them back.”

Aziraphale didn’t laugh, but he did feel better. “If we needed proof that you’re still a demon, there it is.”

* * *

Crowley spent days at the shop, then disappeared for a couple of weeks, as he tended to do every time things got a little emotionally ragged; it was like finding balance again, relearning how to do personal space after spending too much time together protecting one another from imaginary threats.

The simmering anger waned as time went on, as he kept himself busy, as he tended to the bookshop that wasn’t _ quite _ his anymore. Losing it was almost as bad as losing God, in its own way; all the restored books were farcical, just copies of what had been. It was like looking at a reconstructed face after a car accident: it was the mortician’s best approximation of Auntie Mary working off photographs with the tools on hand, and it was convincing enough, but it was still _ wrong. _

Aziraphale didn’t blame Adam, and he tried not to let it bother him, but when the feeling of cold detachment threatened to overtake him, he thought about the books instead. There were still some treasures in the shop, enough which warranted his usual stubborn protectiveness, but nothing would ever be the same. Uriel’s visit had forced him to face that fact. 

Things should have felt perfect; he had his life back, better on the whole than it had been before even without his centuries-old collection. He had his dearest friend at his side, _ at his back, _ and the quiet rapture of a particular mutual affection. He had bright lemon crème and the vast expanse of human imagination to explore. He had the sinful pleasure of driving out potential customers and the more traditional happiness of blessing newborns and soothing heartbreak and making tea for Eliot whenever his parents tried to send him on a guilt trip for “killing their daughter” Eloise. He had a new dynamic in his life, something hopeful. He wasn’t adrift. He _ wasn’t. _He wasn’t an angel without a job. He wasn’t a collector with a fake collection. He was fine, and so was everything else.

Wrongness nagged at him anyway.

The wrongness began to solidify into an idea a month after Uriel’s first visit. Crowley was conveniently day-drinking on the lumpy divan, a sight which was a nice addition to Aziraphale’s collection of customer deterrents (they were particularly proud of the Yelp review mentioning the rude drunk blocking the section the customer thought might contain what they were looking for), and there was a small, shady-looking blonde who seemed the type to try to _ buy _something. Crowley slipped off the divan in that funny, almost-slithering way he moved, slid over to Aziraphale (who was half-hiding amongst his less-valuable Voltaire collection, just in case she asked questions), and murmured in his ear, “Want me to scare her off the fun way?”

And Aziraphale nearly burst out of his skin. The soft drip of Crowley’s lips against his ear, the careful placement of fingertips between his scapulae, it was _ too much, _and it was doing something unpleasant to his corporation. His vision was narrowing and the sounds of the whole world seemed slightly out of sync. His hands shook. 

It was a problem. Any ethereal being with a long-term corporation had to learn human anatomy in detail, for both aesthetic and pragmatic reasons. Aziraphale had been in one human-shaped body or another for nearly 6,000 years, and he _ chose _which systems to keep and which to disregard. He didn’t, strictly speaking, eat; he experienced taste and texture, and the food vanished before it could wreak havoc. Alcohol only crossed the blood-brain barrier because he decided it should, not because he had a reliable circulatory system. His corporation ought not be doing things he wasn’t allowing or telling it to do. He had already broken down once, after Uriel’s visit; was this the Antichrist’s work? Had the child accidentally given Aziraphale a more human body?

The responsible thing would be to deal with it, to close the shop and sit down and work things out on paper, or to at least ask Crowley not to do that again until he could figure out how to fix his body, but he didn’t.

He shifted away, vaguely noting the resigned slouch in Crowley’s posture, and waited until the blonde had made her selection. He smiled a sharp, cold smile at her and said, “That one’s trade only. Do you have something for me?”

“What d’you mean, _ trade only,” _ the blonde asked, waving Callisto’s _ Rhapsody, _which was of particular importance to Aziraphale because it hadn’t existed until Adam had restored the shop. He was discovering new books all the time post-reality shift, and he wasn’t letting any of them go.

He waved his hands toward the “ancient books that actually haven’t existed very long even though the history is definitely real” section, and pointed at the sign that said TRADE ONLY. “I only accept books of equal or greater value in exchange for the ones in trade only sections.”

“But,” she said, enunciating every word as though he were particularly slow, “I’ve got _ money. _The tag says three hundred. You can just buy whatever you want to trade me for.”

“The tag is incorrect. Have you got three _ thousand?” _

She looked between him and the book. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“You’re right,” he agreed affably, nodding with enthusiasm. “It’s worth five at least. What was I thinking?”

“Nobody has that kind of money for an old-”

“I didn’t ask for your money. I asked for a trade,” said Aziraphale, who knew she didn’t have anything to trade. Until moments ago, he hadn’t had a TRADE ONLY sign anywhere in the shop.

“Well I don’t have one of those, either.” She slammed the book down on the counter. He considered banishing her from the entire street. “You’re ridiculous! How do you stay _ open?” _

“I made a deal with a demon,” he replied archly, just to make Crowley laugh. It worked. The laughter was somewhat strangled, but it was at least real enough to make the blonde snarl, turn on her heel, and walk out in a huff. Aziraphale followed closely so that he could lock the door and turn the sign before anyone else managed to notice he’d opened the shop in the first place.

After a short bout of quiet, Crowley asked, “Angel, do you _ always _do that when someone has enough money to meet your ridiculous prices?”

“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate,” he replied, not-so-succinctly pointing out the pointlessness of the word _ shop _ as written in this particular case of _ bookshop. _ Crowley gave him a look that likely contained exactly the amount of dubious respect he deserved, although Aziraphale himself wasn’t certain what that amount was. Dante Alighieri had been one of Aziraphale’s (accidental) inspirations, but the actual literary value of his work was…

Some scholars sang its praises. Those scholars were wrong.

“You know, there aren’t any Gates of Hell,” Crowley pointed out. “No words, either.”

“Of course there are. I distinctly remember a sign asking me to please not lick the walls,” Aziraphale corrected, but he couldn’t make his voice sound invested in the argument. “Usually there’s a reason for warning signs like that. It makes one wonder who was the first.”

“I wasn’t _ licking _ them, I was _ smelling _them,” protested Crowley, and the sad part was, Aziraphale had no idea if Crowley was being honest about being the reason for the sign, or if he was just enjoying playing up the dirty imagery.

“I don’t believe you,” he decided, or perhaps suggested. Either way, his words lacked anything remotely resembling disgust, instead settling firmly in the area of fond exasperation. (While Aziraphale _ was _good at being stern when he needed to, or with people who deserved it, or when he felt like it, he couldn’t manage it this time. It was Crowley; one couldn’t be unduly annoyed with him. If Aziraphale was annoyed with him, he’d done something to earn it, likely on purpose.)

In the good-natured bickering that followed, he forgot to follow up on his idea.

* * *

Coffee shops were Hell’s work, which was why it was probably safer to do his calculations in the local chain than at his shop. Nobody would think to look for him here, not even Crowley, and nobody here would care to look at what he was doing. He had a leatherbound notebook and a pen, and until he figured out which of his systems was the one currently in failure, that was all he needed.

Contrary to how it may have appeared, Aziraphale didn’t just miracle up money when he needed to buy something. He simply transported the approximate amount of money he needed from one known location to another by means of a simple _ human _ spell he’d learned several hundred years ago (this spell only worked on inanimate objects, and would spoil food); this way, he wouldn’t get written up for the use of “frivolous miracles,” but he’d also never have to worry about losing money if he had to hand over his wallet (or purse) during a robbery. (Throughout the years, he had taken on odd jobs he hadn’t enjoyed like ministering or healing to sustain himself. These days, the money came from the business of e-readers and e-books, augmented with the online sales of whatever happened to be popular at the time. Aziraphale didn’t care to sell _ his _books, but had no qualms about the selling of books in general, after all. A nice woman in Liverpool facilitated most of the business so that Aziraphale didn’t have to think about it, and in return, she miraculously never had to worry about her mortgage or her husband’s job security.)

This transportation spell was performed often enough that he did it without thinking and handed over the money, much to the confusion of Kyle, who was working the register. Kyle blinked and said, “Wow, that’s a neat trick.”

“Thank you, my dear,” Aziraphale said idly, already absorbed in his musings. “Please, keep the change.”

“But,” said someone behind him. He was sketching shorthand alchemic theorems in empty air, trying to decide which might help him examine the problem, where to start, which plane of existence the problem originated from. Usually, people mistook his gestures for anxious fidgeting. He allowed it, because the explanation would be tiresome and forbidden, and because he didn’t care.

“Don’t mind him,” someone else said. He thought he recognized her voice from the other times he’d been here specifically to hide from Crowley. “It’s real money. He’s weird, but mostly harmless.”

He sat down heavily in an armchair and drew out his notepad and pen, setting aside his drink to cool a bit while he worked. _ Weird but mostly harmless, _indeed. That was how most people perceived him, aside from the ones who tried to threaten him into giving up his shop. Both perceptions were largely by design. 

Humans could not describe the nature of angels for the same reason that angels could not describe the nature of God: they lacked knowledge and understanding, even when they worked closely together. Even the humans who knew Aziraphale fairly well, or as well as he ever let them know him, would be hard-pressed to describe him in terms that weren’t sartorial, general, or “Who wants to talk about some fussy old queer when we’ve got better things to do, anyway?” Aziraphale, however, knew exactly what he was. Moreover, he knew what he was supposed to be, and he knew that there was a...disconnect.

He’d always been prone to considering things from all angles first, unwilling to make a move without another option in place — he thought it was unspeakably cute that Crowley had _ genuinely thought _ he’d walked into that church in 1941 with no plan B to speak of; although he _ had _been thoroughly taken in by Kleinschmidt, it would have been stupid to rely on humans not to be found out, die, or otherwise fail to show up and make an arrest on time; he had no intention of ever mentioning it, though, because Crowley deserved to feel like a hero more often — so he’d start with nature, then move to physiology, then psychology. If none of that turned up results, he’d likely have to go to Crowley with his questions, which would be embarrassing for everybody, but at least they didn’t have to pretend to be at odds anymore.

Known facts: 

  1. Aziraphale was something Else — not a Cherub, as initially made, and not a Principality, the celestial title and job he had chosen to do for millennia, but something new. He had no title, and served no purpose. With Adam’s limited understanding of the nature of angels, he couldn’t be certain that the separation from Madame Tracy hadn’t done something to him to make him...wrong.
  2. Nevertheless, functionally, if not ideologically, he was still part of the Host. This was verifiable fact: he could still perform blessings and miracles, and he was still Divine.
  3. This implied that the Almighty had either designed Her angelic Host to be flexible, or he was a statistically insignificant aberration who had escaped Her notice.
    1. Not that it mattered in any case, since She had seemingly abandoned this universe, leaving the Host in an unsustainable situation.
    2. The remaining Host had no real power over him, unless he allowed it, and up until his failed execution they had been, unknowingly or otherwise, exploiting his lack of knowledge.
    3. Contrary to Heavenly propaganda, angels could feel and perform love just as intensely as they inspired humans to feel and perform it, although it wasn’t an intended function of the angelic design.
    4. Aziraphale was not functioning incorrectly in any other ways according to his basic nature _as an angel._
  4. If Aziraphale’s Elseness was in line with a heretofore undiscovered angelic flexibility, there was no way to measure the comparative effects.
  5. If Aziraphale’s Elseness was an aberration, there was no way to measure the comparative effects.
  6. This entire list was pointless, but at least he could now run the numbers on miraculous energy deficits and, perhaps, reach a good hypothesis about celestial interference on the metaphysical planes of the human brain thanks to Madame Tracy, which he would probably pitch to Crowley next time conversation dried up.
  7. His tea was cold.

It seemed, overall, that the “angelic nature” line of questioning would not net workable results.

He drew an ancient symbol.

Actions had consequences. It was an unavoidable fact of existence, and it caused him infrequent cases of absolutely paralyzing anxiety. As a rule, small indulgences didn’t matter; whether he enjoyed sushi at a nice restaurant had no real effect on the overall equilibrium of the universe, angel or not, and even being in love with Crowley hadn’t had much effect, considering that most of Aziraphale’s drive to avert the apocalypse had been fueled by his stubborn affection for Earth and its curiosities (and yes, Crowley had been among that number, incidentally but nonspecifically). But feeling love and performing love weren’t the same. He and Crowley had been performing it in muted colors for centuries now, with the odd dramatic rescue added in for flair.

Crowley had walked into a _church _during the _Blitz _to help Aziraphale with a little Nazi problem. They never talked about it, just as they never talked about the time Aziraphale had done some highly unethical things to the minds of some demonologists who’d managed to catch Crowley in their net. They worked on a grander scale; it was the equivalent of humans buying drinks for each other.

(Flirting, maybe.)

Was his physical corporation having some kind of...delayed reaction? If he assumed, and this was a leap but it was the only starting point he had, that his possession of and subsequent separation from the medium had done something to him, could he be experiencing some kind of adjustment issue or allergy? If so, to what?

What was the common thread?

Uriel had thrown herself at him in anger and sadness, and he’d held her, feeling both her emotions and his own. He’d subsequently shut down for days. Crowley had come over and pulled him out of that and he’d nearly crawled out of his skin, which seemed normal for the given value of “emotional breakdown.” Then there had been that display at the bookshop…

But no, those weren’t the only times, were they? Just the most obvious, because the reaction had been negative when he’d _ expected _it to be positive. He wore layers and intentionally allowed his Divinity to slip out when he was in crowds so that they’d flow around him instead of brushing up against him. Recently, he chose one human to attend to his human-shaped grooming needs and stuck with them until they retired or died. He’d been more comfortable when Crowley had thrown him up against a wall in anger than when Crowley had brushed his lips against Aziraphale’s ear.

So he didn’t care for much physical contact, with living things first and foremost, but also to a lesser extent unexpected inanimate objects. Sensitivity, heightened by his most recent discorporation. That was unfortunate, but hardly unworkable.

Here was the truth of the matter: he wasn’t bothered. It wasn’t a loss. Now that he knew what the issue was, he didn’t have an unseemly yearning. He was a bit embarrassed to have taken so long to figure it out, of course, but how could he have been expected to guess at it right away when the only negative thing was how it might affect his relationships with _ other _people? 

He looked at the symbols on the paper: ancient, sacred, and precise. His pen ink hadn’t done anything he hadn’t wanted it to do. There was no human language that could quite translate what the sacred symbols meant, but to Aziraphale, the combination of beauty and trust and heart-pull unraveled Crowley himself on paper, and Aziraphale knew it was just as important to tell the demon as it was to know the answer.

* * *

_ Honesty, _he reminded himself.

Crowley was not particularly receptive to honesty, though he seemed to not have a problem with the concept itself. Aziraphale supposed it was because honesty hurt. Even when it was the cathartic kind of pain, it was still pain — actually, no, that wasn’t right. Crowley could handle all sorts of pain. Catharsis was hard for him. A weaker person might bend and decide to spare Crowley’s feelings, but not Aziraphale.

They were at Crowley’s flat this time. It meant that the angel was out of his comfort zone, but it also meant that the demon would have a harder time escaping from what might turn out to be a difficult conversation. The couch they were sitting on, a comfortable, slouchy thing that felt like it’d been _ made _for Aziraphale, hadn’t existed until Aziraphale had begun spending time there; he suspected that it had, indeed, been made for him. The rest of the flat looked as lived-in as it always had, meaning not-at-all, since Crowley still didn’t really live there. He slept there when he decided to sleep and tended to his plants, but it wasn’t a home. 

“All right, angel, out with it,” said Crowley, astute as always. His wine glass was far fuller than it should be, not that either being observed those kinds of social niceties while in private. When inebriation required several bottles each, even using a glass seemed a little silly. “You’re doing your _ thing. _You’ve been saving up some speech all day, and if you wait any longer I’ll be drunk before you finish.”

“I’ve been doing my _ thing? _ What _ thing?” _

“Tell you after you tell me.”

Well. Fine, then.

“Do you...like touching me, Crowley?” The demon paused, the glass halfway up to his mouth, a funny expression on his face. Aziraphale was inclined to call it caution. Realizing very quickly that there were other ways his query could be taken, he rushed to clarify, “In general — do you enjoy being touched? By me, or humans, or other demons. Beings. Animals, even.”

“Haven’t thought about it,” Crowley answered. Aziraphale believed him. It wasn’t something one thought about, really, until suddenly it was. “Suppose I do. Hell is — you saw it, crowded as anything. Everywhere you go, someone’s touching you. It’s a constant contact hit of _ somebody’s _aura. Gets a little lonely without it, but at least up here it doesn’t smell like somebody stuffed you in a bag of sulfur and sweaty dicks. Why?”

He didn’t remember much of a crowd, but then, Aziraphale assumed he’d been brought in through some backdoor, just in case he tried to corrupt some lesser demons on the way or something. As though anyone had that kind of power. Maybe it hadn’t been a safety measure so much as a punishment: dying alone and untouched. The thought made him almost as uncomfortable as the careful way Crowley set his glass of wine to the side so that he could focus on Aziraphale, eyes unguarded by sunglasses. 

“I’ve been thinking. I _ don’t _like it,” said Aziraphale, “at least, not when I’m not expecting it, and sometimes not then either. I thought you ought to know, considering how very much you mean to me. I don’t want you to think I...”

“I know, angel.” Crowley looked amused. “Figured it out weeks ago when you nearly discorporated just from a whisper. Is that all?”

“No. I want to make an offer. I had a feeling you liked it, and I like you — that is to say, I want you to have what makes you happy and I don’t want you to be lonely — and it wouldn’t be like my books, you know, a farce, you know how difficult it is to make me do anything I don’t want to do-”

“What — _ books? _Angel, you overthink everything. All the time. Take a breath, or count, or whatever it is you make your corporation do when you get in your head.”

“I just,” he said, and stopped, unsure of how to continue. 

Crowley nodded decisively and scooted closer, sliding one arm around Aziraphale. He didn’t touch him; his arm was still on the head of the couch, and Aziraphale could either initiate something or not. What a dear. The demon, seeming pleased with himself, said, “You and I have been together for longer than we’ve been together. We always manage a good balance. Usually because I’m _ very _clever, and patient, of course. Patience of a predator on the hunt, me.”

“Yes, absolutely,” Aziraphale agreed genially. That wasn’t his experience. Crowley _ was _ clever when he had to be, but he was a bit lazy. He also wasn’t usually very patient, although the embarrassing business with Warlock Dowling had shown that he _ could _do the long con when properly motivated. “You’re wonderfully clever. And so kind.”

“I take it back. No balance for us.”

Aziraphale shook his head, having expected something along the lines of that reaction. In silent apology, he rested his head in the crook of Crowley’s arm and patted his thigh once. _ “Really, _ though. I know that you’d rather I didn’t say things like that, but you are the _ only _ person in thousands of years, maybe since the beginning, who’s considered me, Aziraphale, an individual with...well, needs and options. It _ means _ something, and I want to give back to you. It’s why we’re _ talking. _Some things don’t need to be said; you know that. Other things do need clarification. Tell me what you want from me.”

“Not like I have a list,” the demon grumbled, “angel-approved or otherwise.”

“Don’t think of what I might agree to; just tell me what you _ want. _We’ll go from there.”

“S weird to say some of it — Hell is Hell, but not all of it’s bad,” said Crowley carefully, moving his arm to rest his hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder. The angel decided he liked the firm, solid touches better than light ones. Hand-holding was much better than a flutter of lips against his ear. “Lack of privacy never bothered anyone; what has anybody got to hide when we’re all doing bad? When you’re stuck in Hell, if you get a chance to rest, you just form a big pile wherever you can find a space, with whoever’s available. It started before we knew how to share our auras. Getting cut off from you lot...it didn’t matter where we landed. Our Divinity burned away, but inside, where we used to feel connected to the rest of the Host, it was so _ cold. _I like lying together.”

“Then we shall try that,” Aziraphale decided.

Crowley squeezed Aziraphale’s shoulder and continued, “I like your hands. I always have, even that time you came back in a skinny corporation and your knuckles bulged. I liked holding your hand. I liked kissing your hand. I’d like to kiss your mouth. I stand by what I said before: I don’t want to have sex with you, and I have no idea why you offered-”

“I didn’t want to _ deny _you again if it were something you needed from me-”

“I don’t like the idea of you doing something for me because you think you _ have _ to. Takes the fun out of the sin if it’s performed _ under duress. _ The _ point _ is, I don’t want to have sex, but I do want to sleep with you, or sleep while you sit next to me, if you’re still not sleeping. I’d _ really _like to kiss your mouth.”

“None of that seems particularly unworkable.” Aziraphale let the _ sin _comment slide, because Crowley would be smug and incorrigible otherwise. “We’ll have to sleep here, of course; my bed is purely aesthetic, doesn’t even have a mattress. If you’d like to lie with me, we can try different configurations — perhaps when I’m reading. I’d rather you didn’t take my hand willy-nilly, but I do like the idea of holding yours every once in a while.”

“No kissing, then.”

He hesitated. He _ could _ say no, but he didn’t want to. It wasn’t anything as worrisome as Crowley’s assumption of consent under duress; he just didn’t think he wanted to say no to something acceptably intimate without trying it, _ especially _ if it might help make up for the hundreds or thousands of years he’d spent not understanding how Crowley saw him. If only Aziraphale had known sooner that Crowley’d spent centuries believing they were hiding a romantic relationship! It might have allowed them to avoid so many arguments if he hadn’t mistaken the _ source _of the anger every time it looked like he was playing games. 

He could trust Crowley. He was a demon; where Aziraphale had an irresistible urge to bestow blessings and inspiration on struggling souls, Crowley had the urge to tempt and tease out whatever base desires the same humans had. Where Aziraphale wanted to do the right thing, Crowley wanted to do the wrong one; more than once they had done the same thing to influence humans in opposite ways. But that was for humans. With each other, they could put business aside, especially now. Since Crowley wouldn’t benefit from a blessing, Aziraphale didn’t feel the need to perform one; since Aziraphale wasn’t much affected by demonic wiles, Crowley didn’t feel the need to trick him. And with Heaven and Hell leaving them in peace, they were free to experiment without worrying about their superiors barging in.

“You can kiss me if you like,” he said matter-of-factly, and then he scooted closer: enough to be a suggestion, but not a demand. He reached out and placed his finger on Crowley’s bottom lip with a smile. Crowley’s eyes — Aziraphale had found them unsettling once, all yellow and slitted and demonic, but now they were as dear to him as the rest of the demon himself — dropped to Aziraphale’s lips. Encouragingly, the angel added, “I’ll tell you if it’s too much.”

“Then I’m going to kiss you now, Aziraphale,” Crowley murmured, “unless…”

Unless Aziraphale didn’t want to. Unless he couldn’t. “Please, do, continue.”

_ “Do, continue,” _Crowley mocked, but then he leaned forward and touched his lips to Aziraphale’s.

Many books had been written on the subject of love, and many of those contained kisses. There was a lot of flowery language full of metaphor, all butterflies and fireworks, or the darker variants depending on the type of book. The kiss was none of that. It was not hesitant or shy; it was firm, but not unyielding. It was not demanding, and Crowley did not try to stick his tongue in Aziraphale’s mouth. It was a press of the lips, a slight tilt of the head to avoid the discomfort of mashing their noses together. If anything, the angel thought as he brought his right hand up to gently tangle in the hair at the base of Crowley’s neck, the kiss was like a conversation, one he was glad to finally have.

When they separated, there was no moisture. His stomach didn’t do cartwheels and he had no urge to jump at Crowley and do something aggressively sexual, possibly naked. He didn’t want to let go of Crowley’s hair, as soft as it was, so he didn’t. Neither of them had to open their eyes, because they hadn’t _ fluttered closed. _It wasn’t Aziraphale’s favorite activity, and he didn’t think it would become one, but he didn’t want to crawl out of his skin in discomfort, either. 

“I think I prefer the firmer things,” he said into the vicinity of Crowley’s neck. He wondered how long he’d have to wait before it was appropriate to wriggle out of the demon’s affectionate one-armed embrace, and if he actually wanted to, seeing as he’d have to let go of the hair.

“Firmer?”

“Soft touches are, well.” Crowley had been straightforward about Hell; surely Aziraphale could do the same. “I don’t know much about the new Heaven, but when you and I discorporated each other, I’d have to stay there occasionally. I like it here enough to put up with it forever, but I don’t like having a corporeal form. It’s so confining, even the roomy ones like this. I felt so much more _ solid _when I got to stretch my wings — on more than one plane — and even a palpable form, which we tend to use when we socialize with other angels just to be polite, is more comfortable. Firm touches are more solid. The light ones make this corporation think it’s about to be attacked.”

“Safety. I can see it,” said the demon. He reached up and took Aziraphale’s hand out of his hair, pulling it down and linking their fingers. He moved back slightly. “You can play with my hair later, angel, right now I want to see you. Was that all right?”

“It was.”

“And you’re not about to run off somewhere to try and figure this out with calculations like that time in Norway?”

Aziraphale said nothing, feeling a little foolish already. Crowley snorted in amusement, obviously realizing he was too late in asking, but he didn’t say anything either. Everything started to feel strange, so he let go of Crowley’s hand, and the demon removed himself from Aziraphale’s immediate space by scooting back just a little more. They really shouldn’t have waited so long to _ talk _to each other.

“I expect you’ll need to tell me when you need something,” Aziraphale said carefully after a moment of watching Crowley be amused, “because I won’t think to touch you unless I’m planning something. Ask for my hand and I will give it gladly. Or — mostly. I can’t guarantee…oh, dear. I’d love to be more romantic for you. Tell me how.”

“I just _ appreciate _ you,” Crowley said. He looked like he wasn’t sure what to do with his limbs now. “The most romantic thing you can do for me is _ be here. _Don’t shut me out again. Drink with me. Let me buy you lunch. Let me bring you those pastries you like without telling me I didn’t have to, because I wouldn’t be bringing them if I didn’t want to. Let me drive you where you need to go. Kiss me every once in a while, even if it’s only once every couple of months. Whenever you can handle it. Let me look after you when you’re involved in a project. Keep me — let me be yours. I’ve loved you for a long time, Aziraphale. I know who you are, and I know how you change. If you tie yourself into weird little bows to try and be someone you’re not, you won’t be the angelic bastard I fell for.”

“Crowley,” Airaphale breathed, in lieu of telling him how wonderful he was.

Something must have showed in his face, though, because Crowley scowled self-consciously and added, “This conversation? It never happens again. I’m not turning into a — some kind of a — a thing. That does...whatever that was.”

“Of course not,” he soothed, because the demon was allowed to have his safe behaviors just like the angel was allowed to have his. Privately, though, Aziraphale would remember and cherish this conversation. He didn’t _ exactly _understand what Crowley wanted, but he could do all of the things he’d asked for, and trust that Crowley would ask for more if he needed more. They were both dreadful communicators, but Crowley hadn’t hesitated to stand in the middle of the sidewalk and beg Aziraphale to run away to the stars with him. 

It was, he supposed, a function of love. Aziraphale had freely admitted that he was willing to give of himself and make changes he wasn’t comfortable with just to give Crowley what he deserved. That the demon would never _ ask _for those changes was proof that Crowley loved him back.

**Author's Note:**

> Only a few literary references in here because I'm an uneducated little bird who has a hard time reading anymore:
> 
> Sula and Nel: from Toni Morrison's _Sula._  
Robin and Nora: from Djuna Barnes' _Nightwood._  
First line: bastardized from Jane Austen, obviously.  
Aziraphale's tart remark about the "shop" part of "bookshop:" the inscription over the Gates of Hell in the _Inferno_ portion of Dante's three-part dribblefest. I cannot overstate how little I recommend reading any part of the Divine Comedy, but I imagine it would be an in-joke for Aziraphale and Crowley.


End file.
